had ceased to be awakened in them by really great works, such as the odes
of Anacreon or Sappho or the orations of Pericles. That the first speech
was really written by Lysias is improbable. Like the poem of Solon, or the
story of Thamus and Theuth, or the funeral oration of Aspasia (if genuine),
or the pretence of Socrates in the Cratylus that his knowledge of philology
is derived from Euthyphro, the invention is really due to the imagination
of Plato, and may be compared to the parodies of the Sophists in the
Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this sort occur in the Dialogues, and the
gravity of Plato has sometimes imposed upon his commentators. The
introduction of a considerable writing of another would seem not to be in
keeping with a great work of art, and has no parallel elsewhere.

In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians at
their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the art.'
True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech which he
makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare Symp.)
Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech seems to
consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he begins with a
definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by going back to
general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness of Socrates, which
hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of the style.

But Plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit Socrates as the
rival or superior of the Athenian rhetoricians. Even in the speech of
Lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the
parallel oration of Socrates. First, passionate love is overthrown by the
sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view of love
which is afterwards revealed to us. The extreme of commonplace is
contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations. Socrates,
half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the disguise of